Apple’s iPhone 3G is not the only big story of the week, there is also the release of Global Gold’s virtual hosting offer, VM Hosting.  Many companies still do not realise how cost-effective and efficient virtual web solutions can be. There deliver the obvious pricing benefits compared to dedicated server but in performance terms they are hard to beat providing not only a natural upgrade path from a Virtual Private Server but also a means of enabling those companies who have dedicated servers which are clearly excessive to requirements. it is. To find out more simply visit this link to VM Hosting . Alternatively call 0845 313 0906 for an objective assessment of your actual needs and a solution that is appropriate for it.

For some companies, a Dedicated Server appears too much of a leap from their existing Virtual Private Server (VPS). The need to increase reliability and performance is often outweighed by the rising cost of moving to a Dedicated Server. A Virtual Machine (VM) therefore, is a very effective alternative. VM Hosting is a very reliable and cost effective solution, that has the added benefit of being more environmentally friendly. A Virtual Machine would be an ideal solution for companies looking to update their old, out of date Dedicated Server equipment, as well as growing companies who want to expand their business without encompassing spiralling costs. With the same configuration and flexibility as a Dedicated Server, a VM is able to run just as smoothly on a Windows 2003 operating system as it is Redhat Linux, Redhat Fedora or Debian operating system.

All of the websites on a shared server share the operating system and resources (such as CPU time allowance and delays, bandwidth, RAM memory). If your neighbours have problems with their sites this can temporarily slow down the server’s performance and therefore your website’s performance. On the other hand a Virtual Private Server provides a partitioned environment. Every partition has a separate operating system installed on it and a guaranteed share of hardware resources (as above). Whilst the server does have multiple operating systems and partitions, each of the partitions behaves the same as a dedicated server; but at a much lower cost to you.

Dedicated servers, because of the higher level of control they offer growing websites, are often considered as an option. The cost can be difficult to justify despite the attraction of added control. The same functionality of a dedicated server is provided by a VPS Plan but at a lower cost. Using a VPS Plan, Webmasters can use many of the self-management tools such as the ability to start, stop, and reboot a server without technical support from the web hosting team.

In business it is of course important to have contingencies. A business will typically have a backup printer or have temporary staff they can call upon in a crisis. Why do they have these contingencies in place? A good manager would have identified the risk and spent time, prior to the risk actually turning into a problem, preparing a contingency plan for when the expected problems arise.

It is the same for data contingencies. A mirrored RAID system is great for backing up and preventing loss of data. However what happens if data placed onto a RAID system is overwritten by mistake with invalid data or the data is deleted? Ultimately these problems described occur through human error. They are though, real risks that have to be identified and managed.

A RAID system will not help in these scenarios, because a RAID system has no sense of time. They will only help a business to retrieve the data that was on them at the point in time that one of their hard disks fail. Whether that data is correct or not is another matter because, for example, 3 weeks earlier a member of staff might have deleted some crucial data by mistake.

The solution is to deploy a point-in-time backup system that backs up the data that is held in the RAID array to a third party device or hard disk at specified intervals. When a business discovers that its current data is not valid it can “roll back the clock” and look at that data at an earlier point in time. How far back the backup system can go depends on the backup system’s available memory.

For larger businesses that have hundreds of Gigabytes of data and who want to be able to roll back up to 7 years, this might sound expensive. There are some products available that can perform differential backups, which means it only backs up the sections of the data that have changed since the last backup. Which saves a lot of backup hard disk space.